


Bounce

by apiphile



Series: I call this series "Oh dear Mycroft" [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Autism, Backstory, Childhood, Gen, Somerset, Watchet, bossy bossy mycroft, bouncy castles are fun sherlock what is the fucking matter with you, children's birthday parties are a special kind of hell, don't lie moffat that kid has aspergers, except he was already doing it by now, it's okay he becomes a detective instead, michael fielding is a real person, mummy is a gorgon monster, this is like the just so story of mycroft being manipulative, whatever i write what i waaaaant, you are not mummy mycroft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-21
Updated: 2012-01-21
Packaged: 2017-10-29 21:32:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/324372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apiphile/pseuds/apiphile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mummy sends small Mycroft and small Sherlock to a birthday party in the village. Neither of them want to go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bounce

Michael Fielding is going to be at the party. This is Mycroft's first objection. Michael Fielding is - and he believes this with the jaundiced and experienced mind of a boy who has to live with Sherlock for at least another year until he goes away to school - a psychopath. Or possibly a sociopath. He hasn't assumed enough evidence to be certain and he doesn't want to put himself in a position where he has to.

Michael Fielding is the same age as Mycroft's little brother and in some ways similar: he is constructed from pipe-cleaners and spite, he still bites people who try to touch him, and no one really wants to be his friend. Of course, while Sherlock is merely _odd_ Michael is actively _evil_ , and approximately a thousand times less intelligent, but there is sufficient similarity that the cat-burning _shit_ who lives on the other side of Watchet is lumped together in people's minds with Sherlock and consequently with Mycroft.

He doesn't want to be associated with Michael Fielding and if there was some way to undo it he wouldn't be associated with _bloody_ Sherlock either.

The next objection he raises is the rather more subtle "Sherlock won't enjoy it". Admittedly he won't enjoy it either, and there's a possibility that Mummy will force him to go on his own, but at least then he won't have to spend all stupid boring afternoon trying to come up with excuses for why he didn't stop Michael Fielding or Gary Baird from shoving Sherlock into the fish pond.

And Sherlock definitely won't enjoy it. There has yet to be a birthday party in the village that he hasn't been sent home from in disgrace for either barricading himself in the most book-filled room, loudly correcting the parents, or saying hurtfully accurate things about almost everyone there with an expression of smug superiority which on one occasion led to Sian Moore's dad slapping him hard enough to burst a blood-vessel in his eye.

The trouble with the "Sherlock won't enjoy it (and neither will I)" objection is that Mummy has not in the entire course of Mycroft's life so far been especially troubled by what either of her boys do or do not enjoy. Mummy says that life is always to some degree suffering. Mummy points to the absence of their father; Mummy points to the fact that Sherlock's birth damaged her spinal column. Mummy tells them all about the criminals who escape and the babies who die in the womb (the way their sibling had, between Mycroft and Sherlock) and the way that children their age have to work in shoe factories in China. The world isn't fair, and life is suffering, and they can both stop snivelling.

His next objection is that it will interfere with their homework, but Mummy is determined that it should have been done by now anyway, and that if it hasn't been they will just have to forgo doing anything else. This is evidence enough for Mycroft that there is either someone coming to the house, or that there is someone at this horrific party that Mummy is determined to ingratiate herself with, although how she proposes to do this by sending _Sherlock_ along is beyond Mycroft's unusually sharp eleven-year-old mind.

It rains through Friday night, but on Saturday morning it is merely overcast and that means they will be shoved into the garden without due attention to whether or not any of the children _want_ to stand ankle-deep in mud and the decapitated ruins of daisies. Mycroft sneaks a pair of rubber gloves from the cleaner's supplies in the understairs cupboard.

There are about thirty children, and Mycroft is the eldest, and this ought to be a wonderful opportunity for imposing his will on a selection of six to ten year olds but there is also a bloody bouncy castle.

Sherlock says, "Oh for God's sake," with the intensity peculiar to small children and especially to Sherlock, and he drifts away from the rush of his peers to the corner of the garden with a blank face and a heavy tread; the grown-ups are busy trying to make their charges remove their shoes before they start pogoing, and one fat woman in a dress Mycroft deems to be unforgivably ugly is doing her utmost to prevent Michael Fielding from hitting Kelly Deen in the face with his recently-removed shoe. Michael is now hitting the fat woman in the breast.

Mycroft follows his brother at a sedate pace. The garden is ugly, overgrown, untidy, and littered with plastic toys that the owners have not cleared away. They have several children - approximately three more than Mycroft thinks anyone needs - and they never seem to stem the tide of lurid Fisher-Price paraphernalia (a word Sherlock has just picked up from somewhere and will not stop repeating). The children on the bouncy castle are making high-pitched noises of delight, and Sherlock, standing by the hedge with his face screwed up in revulsion, has his fingers in his ears.

"Go away," Sherlock says when Mycroft gets within six feet of him.

Mycroft reaches into his pocket for the gloves. There's no need for them _yet_ , but it's a little comfort to know that they're there still.

"Go and play on the bouncy castle," he says watching the shadows of leaves fall over Sherlock's face and recede as the wind shakes the top of the hedge with dogged determination, and a few drops of rain fall from the twigs.

"I don't want to," Sherlock says, his fingers still in his ears and his face a knot. "It's stupid and you're stupid and they're stupid and someone will only kick me in the face 'by accident' again."

 _Get used to it_ , thought Mycroft, who had endured his own fair share of 'accidental' kicks in the face when Sherlock was still too young to go to school or playgroup. All he said was, "You're making us look weird, go and bounce up and down with the idiots."

"I don't care," Sherlock said, taking one of his fingers out of his ears in order to pre-emptively throw up a defensive hand as Mycroft drew a little closer. "I don't care if I look weird, you're the only one who cares if we look weird, you go on the bouncy castle."

"Mummy wants you to fit in," Mycroft says, playing his one of his strongest cards. He would rather this than the alternative, which is to grab Sherlock by the wrist and drag him over to the pointless edifice so that someone else can try to sweet-talk him into bouncing around like a rubber ball - an activity so alien that Mycroft honestly cannot picture him doing it at all. "And I am too old for bouncy castles and I will just look _odd_."

"Mummy's not here," Sherlock says stubbornly, removing his other finger from his ear the better to shove his hands in his pockets and glare at Mycroft; his hair was combed before they left but already he looks as if he's climbed through the hedge he's standing next to. This is borderline blasphemy.

Mycroft leans over his six-year-old brother and hisses, "I am only trying to _help_ you, you ungrateful little parasite," before leaving him to whatever it is he thinks is so important about that particular stretch of hedgerow. Probably more bones. Sherlock is obsessed with bones; Mycroft read in one of the library books on psychology that Mummy made him get out that this means Sherlock is probably going to turn into a serial killer, although at present Sherlock apparently wants to be a pirate.

He spends the rest of the birthday party buttering up Craig Longworthy's mum. He asks her about her back pain, and her husband, and he gets her cups of tea, and he is charming and he implies that Mummy has been worrying a little too much about Sherlock, and at the end of the party when Mrs Hannity comes to take them home again, he says, "If Mummy asks you if we had a nice time will you tell her yes? We had a lovely time, but she does worry so."

When Mummy and Mrs Longworthy talk on the telephone briefly that evening, Mycroft puts his ear to Mummy's bedroom door and listens to the tinny voice from the speakerphone. Sherlock, passing between the bathroom and his bedroom with an armful of blood-stained toilet paper and a scabbing gash on his left hand gives Mycroft a withering look but says nothing.

Eight unrelated mentions of "bouncing", "jumping", and "springing" in Mycroft's little chat have evidently paid off: Mrs Longworthy swears up and down that she saw Sherlock pinging around on the inflatable fortress and that Mycroft was "an absolute sweetheart". Crisis averted, Mycroft thinks, slinking away from the bedroom door with the rubber gloves still in his pocket.


End file.
